A Photo Voyage Through 2013

Somehow, it really felt like 2013 was a year in which NOTHING happened. And it's true that things were pretty mellow compared to some of the previous years of my life. But yesterday, I was FINALLY taking all of the photos off of my camera (for the first time in nearly a year, since March), and I realized that some pretty cool things actually did happen.

And, since I posted exactly twice during the year, I thought I would take us on a photo journey through the year!

In April, boy's brother and his girlfriend took a little trip to New York, so boy and I headed down with Rieko, and we spent a lovely weekend in New York, hanging out with Josh and Rachel and Alex (and his new boyfriend Taylor).

Since I was sad about missing the cherry blossoms in Japan, Alex brought us to a cherry blossom festival in New Jersey, which was suuuuuuuper fun! It wasn't quite as beautifully amazingly wonderful as cherry blossom season in Japan, but it was still great! :-)

Oh, and I got to hang out with Justin for the first time in AGES, which was amazing!!!!

A few weeks later, boy's parents, along with his mom's friend, came to visit us, and we had a great time, buying tons of new things (that we desparately needed) for the apartment, hiking up the mountain, and hanging out doing fun Montreal things!
They also bought us lots and lots of delicious chocolate, which is the thing that makes me most happy in life!

And now I totally don't remember the order, but this stuff also happened:

We went to the Francofolies and saw Dumas (who played the SAME SONGS that I remember liking 10 years ago) with Les Trois Accords. Soooooo many people were smoking, though, that it was making me sick, and I had to leave, nauseated with a near migraine, after only seeing them.

We went to see amazing art at the Botanical Gardens - there were sooooo many amazing sculptures that it's impossible to pick just one as my favorite.

We also saw beautiful Chinese lights at the Botanical Gardens - I'll definitely be going back this year!

We went to comicon and saw LOTS of amazing costumes! And I was inspired to try to do cosplay, though I haven't yet had the opportunity to follow through with that.

Guy got married in a totally beautiful, totally adorable, totally Guy wedding ceremony! (Annie, the bride, and I somehow managed to get our dresses caught together as I was leaving, and I was totally afraid that they were going to have to cut my dress off to separate us. Annie was not amused. I was dying laughing)

And Pattycakes and I danced like crazy fools! :-)

Rieko and I dressed up and went to Rocky Horror to celebrate Halloween! I tried to dress up as a rainbow, but I feel like I look a bit more like a 70's disco star gone wrong.

It was freezing outside, but we had a great time nonetheless, and I think Rieko enjoyed her first Rocky Horror experience.

We went to le festival Juste Pour Rires and had a great time making our way through this super fun maze!

I volunteered in the yukata booth at the Nihon Matsuri, and I ended up in a yukata that was WAY TOO SHORT for me! Still, I met some really nice people and was luckily in a position in which I didn't have to actually put yukata on people, as I was terrible at it.

I went to see the New Kids on the Block (who were, of course, amazing) on their package tour with Boyz II Men (who are now men, and who were terrible) and 98 Degrees (who, with the exception of Nick Lachey, seem to be losing to age)!!!!

We went back to New York for Rachel and Josh's wedding, which was beautiful and wonderful and perfect and amazing. It took place in a book store, and all of the food was vegan, including the cake!! They were gorgeous, and I can't believe they're married now!

While in New York this time, it was also Alex's birthday, so we had festivities with him. And my Aunt Boogie was in town, so we stayed with her, and she and I went to see Kinky Boots, which was suuuuuuper rad! I brought Aunt Boogie on the subway, and, apparently, it is to this day an experience she talks about - her great subway experience!
We also ate lots of delicious vegan doughnuts!!

We spent the day in Ottawa in the rain.

On the way back from Ottawa (in the rain), we saw a beautiful double rainbow!

We played with a giant Nintendo (and saw really cool art) at La Nuit Blanche (for the record, it was not a white night for me - it was far too cold, so I was at home in bed by 1 at the latest).

We saw lots of people dressed up crazy awesome for the Zombie Walk! Unfortunately, we couldn't participate. But the reason we didn't participate was awesome - we got to go fake crash planes in a flight simulator, which was totally cool. And made me totally sick.

I did karaoke with Rieko!

I got a job teaching math at Vanier (though now it looks like I'm probably moving to John Abbott)

Rieko's sister, Aina, and her mother came into town, and we did lots of hanging out - good times!

I saw my friends Ukrainian dance troupe, which was super cool. Even if I was unable to imagine how they were DANCING dressed as they were when I was dripping sweat just standing there.

I dealt with a LOT more snow than I would have liked.

I got SOAKED in the rain on numerous occasions and was mostly happy about it!

I played lots and lots of games with friends, including Jenga (for the record, I lost miserably. Almost every time).

I did lots of hanging out with Rieko!

I met Andi's turtle and her adopted kitty cats! The turtle was sooooo cute (and also, sadly, traumatized by the kitties).

I also went to San Francisco to hang out with my friend Mikey G! We had an AMAZING time, and he even brought me to do trapeze, which was soooooooo much fun!!!! There's a video somewhere.

I went to visit Krist in Colorado, and we went to see Taylor Swift (as my birthday present!!!!), which was soooooo much fun! We also had a "cleaning out your closet" party and went to a Grease sing-a-long! Yay!!!!

I went to Turks and Caicos with the family, where we stayed in an AMAZING house with an amazing beach and did AMAZING things, including scuba diving! It was my first time ever, and I was pretty scared about it, but it was amazing in the end!

I also spent several weeks over the summer in Louisiana! Satoshi and Chieko came to visit from Japan, and we did LOTS of stuff - we went to the Tabasco factory, we went on a swamp tour, we saw lots of alligators, we played tennis, we went to Natchitoches, and we just had an amazing time!

We also celebrated my birthday while there, and I got lots of super fun presents and had lots of fun pink things!

Satoshi and Chieko also got to go wakeboarding for the first time! So fun!

I also was in Louisiana another time for my grandmother's birthday - sooooo much fun! Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any pictures of that. I'm sure lots of other things also happened, but this is long, so this is where I will end now. I'm tired of writing! Bye bye 2013!!!!

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Rockin' It Out Louisiana Style

After my huge ordeal, I don't think I had EVER been happier in my life to be home. For serious.

The first thing I did upon waking up in the morning was to go through all of the books that had arrived at my mom's house that I had won in contests or that had been sent to me by publishers. If you're interested, you can check out the blog post about that in Brizmus Blogs Books.

Then I explored my Mom's new house, which was just BEAUTIFUL! Apparently, she had done a ton of work, and you could so tell as the house was just SO HER!


I got to spend several days lounging around reading, doing next to nothing. It was fantabulous! I also got all of the rest of my Christmas shopping done and presents wrapped and it was really just fantastic! :-) And my grandparents came in, and I got to beat them at Scrabble! Yay! I am TERRIBLE at Scrabble - I was therefore sort-of shocked about the whole winning thing. And I got to hang out with Russell and Miranda, who are both living in Pineville now, and it was SO great to get to spend time with my little bromeo (wow, haven't used that word in AGES, since we lived in Holiday Park).

Then Kristen finally arrived (YAY!!!! Always so much fun to see my sister!! :-) ), and with my Mom, we took a trip up to Natchitoches to see the Christmas lights (I almost just typed Kristen lights), which were absolutely beautifully amazing and wonderful!

I hadn't been to see the lights since high school, since I lived in Natchitoches, and I had these amazing memories about how awesome they are. Kristen was afraid that we were maybe going to be disappointed, but we absolutely weren't. They were just AMAZING!!!!


We met this very nice man who reminded us of Charles Martin (our uncle), who was so nice to take some pictures of the three of us. He was so professional about it that we thought he must be a photographer for a living or something. He informed us that he was, indeed a photographer by profession. A photographer of dead people. He was happy to have some living subjects, he said. :-P Interesting. . .


We found a sled, and Kristen and I just HAD to have a picture in it, as we have on of us when we were very little sitting in a very similar sled (if, I am not mistaken, also in Natchitoches at the lights). I wish I had the old picture to scan and put next to this one.

Anyhow, our trip to Natchitoches was a success - we had SO much fun all hanging out together - even if dinner was not a success. All of the restaurants were closed by the time we finally got around to looking for one. Luckily, I had some plain, cold (sauceless) spaghetti in a Ziploc bag, and we munched on it on the way home so that we weren't too hungry.

After Natchitoches, it was time for CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be sure to check back soon! :-)

While I Was Home: the triathlon

Okay, so this will be my last writing about while I was home. My last day in Louisiana, David and I drove up to Natchitoches to watch my Dad and Tina run/bike/swim their first full triathlon. They did super awesome! I was incredibly impressed, not only by them, but by everyone else there. There was one incredibly HUGE man whose gut kept bumping into his legs. I don't know how he even managed to stand, much less do a triathlon. But do the triathlon he did, which is more than I can say for myself, and he did it in good time, too! I was inspired to some day try to do one myself, but unfortunately Paris really isn't the best training ground. So for now I am contenting myself with preparing to try to start training by playing Wii Fit (which my mother gave me as part of my birthday gift! I love it! YAY!!!!).
Sorry there are no pictures of swimming. I have some pictures of the water, but they don't really show much, so they're not that exciting.